WE HAVE SEEN that, during the years 1569-1574, the
Northern Rebellion claimed and held the interest of
Englishmen of all classes. They accepted it as an attempt to engulf England in the Counter Reformation, the great
movement initiated by the Council of Trent to re-win Protestant
countries for Roman Catholicism. For this reason, loyalists were
quick to link the rebels with other native Catholics who were
found guilty of treason. Within this five-year period they repeatedly reminded subjects of the crisis of 1569 and left no doubt
that, to use pamphleteer Norton's phrase, the Pope was the
"sworn foe of Elizabeth," that the Northern Rebellion was the
salient event in a sustained offensive against Protestant England,
and that new attacks were to be expected.

From 1575 through 1580 there was a surcease of ballads, paphlets, and tracts dealing with the earls' rising. One reason was
that Elizabeth's foreign policy prospered. A successful rising of
native Catholics depended largely upon the participation of a
foreign power, and events tended to minimize the possibility of
an "Enterprise of England" during the last half of this decade.1
When the Duke of Anjou, favorite of the Guise party in France,
became Henry III, Elizabeth had good reason to expect hostility
and perhaps abrogation of the Treaty of Blois, concluded in April, 1572, as a defensive measure against Spain. But the new
French ruler followed the moderate course of his mother, Catherine de Medici. Furthermore, Spain found it expedient to adopt
a friendly policy toward England. It is true that Don John of Austria, brother of Philip II, had succeeded the Duke of Alva as
Governor of the Netherlands and hoped, once he established
peace there, to lead an invasion of England for the purpose of

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